Date:
Tuesday, October 27, 2015 - 5:30pm to 7:00pm
The phenomenon of confabulation is receiving increasing philosophical attention, and its relationship with self-interpretation and deliberation in the light of its epistemic costs and benefits are controversial in the literature. Here I start developing an account of confabulation that is compatible with the empirical evidence by focusing on one form of confabulation, that is, confabulatory explanations for one’s own attitudes and choices.
In section 1 I present one way of understanding confabulation, building on the existing philosophical and psychological literature on the topic. In section 2 I consider examples of explanations for one’s attitudes and choices that can be interpreted as instances of confabulation. In section 3 I focus on the epistemic costs of confabulatory explanations, and in section 4 on their potential epistemic benefits. In section 5 I draw some implications from the previous discussion for debates about rationality and self-knowledge.
A powerpoint for the talk is available on our e-learning site.